Strong reciprocity theorists claim that punishment has evolved to promote the good of the group and to deter cheating. By contrast, weak reciprocity suggests that punishment aims to restore justice (i.e., reciprocity) between the criminal and his victim. Experimental evidences as well as field observations suggest that humans punish criminals to restore fairness rather than to support group cooperation.

Recent business headlines, particularly those related to the collapsed energy-trading giant, Enron and its auditor, Arthur Andersen raise concerns about accountants' ethical reasoning. We propose, and provide evidence from 90 new auditors from Big-Five accounting firms, that a selection-socialization effect exists in the accounting profession that results in hiring accountants with disproportionately higher levels of the Sensing/thinking (ST) cognitive style. This finding is important and relevant because we also find that the ST cognitive style is associated with relatively low (...) levels of ethical reasoning, regardless of gender. This finding implies a need for emphasis on the ethical training of accountants. The results also suggest that accounting firms should consider recruiting accountants with cognitive styles associated with relatively higher levels of ethical reasoning. (shrink)

Hamilton's theory of kin selection is the best-known framework for understanding the evolution of social behavior but has long been a source of controversy in evolutionary biology. A recent critique of the theory by Nowak, Tarnita, and Wilson sparked a new round of debate, which shows no signs of abating. In this overview, we highlight a number of conceptual issues that lie at the heart of the current debate. We begin by emphasizing that there are various alternative formulations of (...) Hamilton's rule, including a general version, which is always true; an approximate version, which assumes weak selection; and a special version, which demands other restrictive assumptions. We then examine the relationship between the neighbor-modulated fitness and inclusive fitness approaches to kin selection. Finally, we consider the often-strained relationship between the theories of kin and multilevel selection. (shrink)

Hamilton's theory of kin selection is the best-known framework for understanding the evolution of social behavior but has long been a source of controversy in evolutionary biology. A recent critique of the theory by Nowak, Tarnita, and Wilson sparked a new round of debate, which shows no signs of abating. In this overview, we highlight a number of conceptual issues that lie at the heart of the current debate. We begin by emphasizing that there are various alternative formulations of (...) Hamilton's rule, including a general version, which is always true; an approximate version, which assumes weak selection; and a special version, which demands other restrictive assumptions. We then examine the relationship between the neighbor-modulated fitness and inclusive fitness approaches to kin selection. Finally, we consider the often-strained relationship between the theories of kin and multilevel selection. (shrink)

Weak measurements offer new insights into the behavior of quantum systems. Combined with post-selection, quantum mechanics predicts a range of new experimentally testable phenomena. In this paper I consider weak measurements performed on time-dependent pre- and post-selected ensembles, with emphasis on the decay of excited states. The results show that the standard exponential decay law is a limiting case of a more general law that depends on both the time of post-selection and the choice of final (...) state. The generalized law is illustrated for two interesting choices of post-selection. (shrink)

Recently a gender-selective harvesting strategy has been proposed for possible control of aquatic invasive species, wherein females of the invasive species are harvested, whilst stocking the males (abbreviated as FHMS strategy) (Lyu et al. in Nat Resour Model 33(2):e12252, 2020). We consider the FHMS strategy with a weak Allee effect, and show that its extinction boundary need not be hyperbolic. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of a non-hyperbolic extinction boundary in two-compartment mating models (...) structured by sex. The model possesses a rich dynamical structure, with several local co-dimension one bifurcations occurring. We also show the occurrence of a global homoclinic bifurcation, which has applicability for large scale strategic bio-control. (shrink)

This volume handles in various perspectives the concept of function and the nature of functional explanations, topics much discussed since two major and conflicting accounts have been raised by Larry Wright and Robert Cummins’s papers in the 1970s. Here, both Wright’s ”etiological theory of functions’ and Cummins’s ”systemic’ conception of functions are refined and elaborated in the light of current scientific practice, with papers showing how the ”etiological’ theory faces several objections and may in reply be revisited, while its counterpart (...) became ever more sophisticated, as researchers discovered fresh applications for it. Relying on a firm knowledge of the original positions and debates, this volume presents cutting-edge research evincing the complexities that today pertain in function theory in various sciences. Alongside original papers from authors central to the controversy, work by emerging researchers taking novel perspectives will add to the potential avenues to be followed in the future. Not only does the book adopt no a priori assumptions about the scope of functional explanations, it also incorporates material from several very different scientific domains, e.g. neurosciences, ecology, or technology. In general, functions are implemented in mechanisms; and functional explanations in biology have often an essential relation with natural selection. These two basic claims set the stage for this book’s coverage of investigations concerning both ”functional’ explanations, and the ”metaphysics’ of functions. It casts new light on these claims, by testing them through their confrontation with scientific developments in biology, psychology, and recent developments concerning the metaphysics of realization. Rather than debating a single theory of functions, this book presents the richness of philosophical issues raised by functional discourse throughout the various sciences.​ Content Level » Research Keywords » Causal role theory of functions - Determination of content - Ecosystem selection - Etiological theory of function - Evolutionary biology - Functional explanations - Historical concepts in biology - Larry Wright - Neurosciences - New mechanism - Selected effects functions - Systemic theory of functions - William Wimsatt Related subjects » Anthropology & Archaeology - Epistemology & Philosophy of Science - Evolutionary & Developmental Biology - Neuroscience - Philosophy TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction.- Section I. Biological functions and functional explanations: genes, cells, organisms and ecosystems.- Part 1.A. Functions, organization and development in life sciences.- Chapter 1. William C. Wimsatt. Evolution and the Stability of Functional Architectures.- Chapter 2. Denis M. Walsh. Teleological Emergence: The Autonomy of Evo-Devo.- Chapter 3. Jean Gayon. Does oxygen have a function, or: where should the regress of biological functions stop?.- Part 1.B. Functional pluralism for biologists? Chapter 4. Frédéric Bouchard. How ecosystem evolution strengthens the case for functional pluralism.- Chapter 5. Robert N. Brandon. A general case for functional pluralism.- Chapter 6. Philippe Huneman. Weak realism in the etiological theory of functions.- Section 2. Section II. Psychology, philosophy of mind and technology: Functions in a man’s world.- Part 2.A. 2A. Metaphysics, function and philosophy of mind.- Chapter 7. Carl Craver. Functions and Mechanisms in Contemporary Neuroscience.- Chapter 8. Carl Gillett. Understanding the sciences through the fog of ”functionalism.’.- 2.B. Philosophy of technology, design and functions.- Chapter 9. Fran¸ coise Longy. Artifacts and Organisms: A Case for a New Etiological Theory of Functions.- Chapter 10. Pieter Vermaas and Wybo Houkes. Functions as Epistemic Highlighters: An Engineering Account of Technical, Biological and Other Functions.- Epilogue.- Larry Wright. Revising teleological explanations: reflections three decades on. (shrink)

Attention has become an important focal point of recent work in ethics and epistemology, yet philosophers continue to be noncommittal about what attention is. In this paper, I defend attention as selection for action in a weak form, namely that selection for action is sufficient for attention. I show that selection for action in this conception captures how we, the folk, experience it and how the cognitive scientist studies it. That is, selection for action pulls (...) empirical and folk‐psychology together. Accordingly, philosophers who take seriously either source have reason to work with selection for action as their starting conception of attention. This conception provides a way to bridge empirical and philosophical concerns where attention is central. The theoretical advantages of selection for action have been obscured by the common opinion that it is easily refuted. I defend the position against many of the published objections and then deploy it to provide a foundation for the intuitive, but inchoate, idea of attention being gradable, something of which there can be more or less. An analysis of the gradability of attention is then applied to consider recent work on the harms due to a surplus of attention. (shrink)

The importance of mate choice and sexual selection has been emphasized by the majority of evolutionary psychologists. This paper assesses three cases of work on mate choice and sexual selection in evolutionary psychology: David Buss on cross-cultural human mate preferences, Randy Thornhill and Steve Gangestad on the link between mate preferences and fluctuating asymmetry, and Geoffrey Miller on the role of Fisher’s runaway process in human evolution. A mixture of conceptual and empirical problems in each case highlights the (...) general weakness of work in evolutionary psychology on these issues. (shrink)

Two general approaches characterize current theories of sociocultural evolution. The "external selection" approach stresses the importance of intersocietal selection; the "adaptive change" approach, the importance of intrasocietal selection. This chapter identifies and critically evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and outlines strategies for integrating these divergent approaches into a single evolutionary perspective.

Associations between language and executive functions are well-established but previous work has often focused more on EFs than on language. To further clarify the language–EF relationship, we assessed several aspects of language and EFs in 431 Swedish children aged 4–6, including selective auditory attention which was measured in an event-related potential paradigm. We also investigated potential associations to age, socioeconomic status, bi-/multilingualism, sex and aspects of preschool attendance and quality. Language and EFs correlated weakly to moderately, indicating that relying on (...) measures of vocabulary alone may overestimate the strength of the language–EF relationship. Contrary to predictions, we found no correlations between selective attention and EFs. There were however correlations between morphosyntactic accuracy and selective auditory attention which is in line with previous work and suggests a specific link between morphosyntax and the ability to suppress irrelevant stimuli. In Sweden, socioeconomic differences are rather small and preschool is universally available, but nevertheless, aspects of parental SES predicted children’s performance on all measures. Bi-/multilingual children performed lower on language also when controlling for SES, highlighting the need for interventions to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes already in preschool. A female advantage was found for both language and EFs, whereas preschool attendance and quality were not significantly related to outcome measures. Future work should include longitudinal studies of language and EF development, include children from diverse SES backgrounds and contribute toward a theoretical framework that further clarifies the language–EF relationship. (shrink)

Selectional preferences have a long history in both generative and computational linguistics. However, since the publication of Resnik's dissertation in 1993, a new approach has surfaced in the computational linguistics community. This new line of research combines knowledge represented in a pre‐defined semantic class hierarchy with statistical tools including information theory, statistical modeling, and Bayesian inference. These tools are used to learn selectional preferences from examples in a corpus. Instead of simple sets of semantic classes, selectional preferences are viewed as (...) probability distributions over various entities. We survey research that extends Resnik's initial work, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and show how they together form a cohesive line of research. (shrink)

Recently Geoffrey Miller has suggested that humor evolved through sexual selection as a signal of "creativity," which in turn implies youthfulness, intelligence, and adaptive unpredictability. Drawing upon available empirical studies, I argue that the evidence for a link between humor and creativity is weak and ambiguous. I also find only tenuous support for Miller’s assumption that the attractiveness of the "sense of humor" is to be found in the wittiness of its possessor, since those who use the phrase (...) often seem to associate it with the affects of relatively mirthless "bonding" laughter. Humor, I conclude, may have evolved as an instrument for achieving broad social adhesiveness and for facilitating the individual’s maneuverability within the group, but that it evolved through sexual selection has yet to be convincingly demonstrated. (shrink)

I admire Wilson & Sober's (W & S's) aim, to alert social scientists that group selection has risen from the ashqs, and to explicate its relevance to the behavioral sciences. Group selection has beenwidely misunderstood; furthermore, both authors have been instrumental in illuminating conceptual problems surrounding higher-level selection. Still, I find that this target article muddies the waters, primarily through its shifting and confused definition of a "vehicle" of selection. The fundamental problem is an ambiguity in (...) the definition of "adaptation." On the one hand, any evolutionary change that results from a selection process could be called an adaptation, by definition; I call this the "weak" view of adaptation. A "strong" view of adaptation, on the other hand, includes some notion of design - the evolution of a specific complex trait understood, in an engineering sense, to provide a mechanism favoring its owner's success in contributing to the evolutionary lineage. (shrink)

A set of sentential revision operations can be generated in a select-direct way within a new framework for belief change named descriptor revision firstly introduced in Hansson [8]. In this paper, we adopt another constructive approach to these operations, based on a relation \ on sentences named believability relation. Intuitively, \ means that the subject is at least as prone to believe or accept \ as to believe or accept \. We demonstrate that so called H-believability relations and basic believability (...) relations, the second of which the is axiomatically characterized with a set of weak postulates, are faithful alternative models for two typical select-direct sentential revision operations. Then we investigate additional postulates on believability relations that correlate with properties of the generated revision operations. Finally, we show that traditional AGM revision operations can be reconstructed from a strengthened variant of the basic believability relation and there is a close connection between this relation and the standard epistemic entrenchment relation. (shrink)

Complexity and life as we know it depend crucially on the laws and constants of nature as well as the boundary conditions, which seem at least partly “fine-tuned.” That deserves an explanation: Why are they the way they are? This essay discusses and systematizes the main options for answering these foundational questions. Fine-tuning might just be an illusion, or a result of irreducible chance, or nonexistent because nature could not have been otherwise (which might be shown within a fundamental theory (...) if some constants or laws could be reduced to boundary conditions or boundary conditions to laws), or it might be a product of selection: either observational selection (weak anthropic principle) within a vast multiverse of many different realizations of physical parameters, or a kind of cosmological natural selection making the measured parameter values quite likely within a multiverse of many different values, or even a teleological or intentional selection or a coevolutionary development, depending on a more or less goal-directed participatory contribution of life and intelligence. In contrast to observational selection, which is not predictive, an observer-independent selection mechanism must generate unequal reproduction rates of universes, a peaked probability distribution, or another kind of differential frequency, resulting in a stronger explanatory power. The hypothesis of Cosmological Artificial Selection (CAS) even suggests that our universe may be a vast computer simulation or could have been created and transcended by one. If so, this would be a far-reaching answer – within a naturalistic framework! – of fundamental questions such as: Why did the big bang and fine-tunings occur, what is the role of intelligence in the universe, and how can it escape cosmic doomsday? This essay critically discusses some of the premises and implications of CAS and related problems, both with the proposal itself and its possible physical realization: Does CAS deserve to be considered as a convincing explanation of cosmic fine-tuning? Is life incidental, or does CAS revalue it? And are life and intelligence ultimately doomed, or might CAS rescue them? (shrink)

argues that when reproduction is sexual, natural selection can explain why individual organisms possess the traits they do. In stating his argument Matthen makes use of a conception of individual organisms as receptacles for collections of genes—a conception that cannot do the work Matthen requires of it. Either these receptacles are abstract objects, such as bare possibilities for organisms, or they are concrete. The first reading is too weak, since it allows selection to explain individual traits in (...) both sexual and asexual contexts. The only concrete entities we might think of as receptacles for collections of genes are male or female gametes. It is true that in the sexual context selection explains why an individual gamete combines with a second gamete of one type rather than another; however, this is not to say that selection explains why an individual organism has the traits it does. (shrink)

In quantum theory, a weak value is a complex number with a somewhat technical definition: it is a ratio whose numerator is the matrix element of a self-adjoint operator and whose denominator is the inner product of a corresponding pair of state vectors. Weak values first appeared in the research literature in a pair of papers in 1987 and 1988, and were originally defined as the results of a special kind of experimental protocol involving non-disturbing measurements combined with (...) an explicit form of post-selection. In the years since, subsequent papers on weak values have produced a number of important practical spin-offs, including new methods for signal amplification and quantum-state tomography. The present work is not concerned with those practical spin-offs, but with historical and ongoing attempts to assign weak values a transparent, single-system interpretation, as well as efforts that invoke weak values to make a number of exotic claims about the properties and behavior of individual quantum systems. This paper challenges these interpretational claims by arguing that they involve several forms of fallacious reasoning. (shrink)

A large literature has grown up around the proposed use of 'weak measurements' to allegedly provide information about hidden ontological features of quantum systems. This paper attempts to clarify the fact that 'weak measurements' are simply strong measurements on one member of an entangled pair, and that all such measurements thus effect complete disentanglement of the pair. The only thing 'weak' about them is that the correlation established via the entanglement does not correspond to eigenstates of the (...) 'weakly measured observable' for the component system that is subject to the weak measurement. It is observed that complete disentanglement always occurs, whether post-­‐selection is performed before or after the pointer detection. Assertions in the literature that weak measurements leave a system negligibly disturbed are therefore inaccurate, and claims based on those assertions need to be critically reassessed. (shrink)

The central role played by Darwin's analogy between selection under domestication and that under nature has been adequately appreciated, but I have indicated how important the domesticated organisms also were to other elements of Darwin's theory of evolution-his recognition of “the constant principle of change,” for instance, of the imperfection of adaptation, and of the extent of variation in nature. The further development of his theory and its presentation to the public likewise hinged on frequent reference to domesticates.We have (...) seen that Darwin's reliance on the analogy between domesticated varieties and wild species was a bold and original step, in light of contemporary views on the nature of domesticates. However, as Darwin undoubtedly foresaw, his reliance on the analogy created difficulties as well as solving problems, and these began with his Malthusian codiscoverer of the principle of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace's paper “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” presented to the Linnean Scoiety along with the first public unveiling of Darwin's theory, states: We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature.62Much has been made of the similarity of views of Darwin and Wallace, but this quotation surely reveals how utterly different their views were on what to Darwin was an important matter. Several critics of the Origin saw Darwin's reliance on the domesticates as his Achilles heel. As Young has pointed out, Samuel Wilberforce included the following passage in his attack on the Origin: Nor must we pass over unnoticed the transference of the argument from the domesticated to the untamed animals. Assuming that man as the selector can do much in a limited time, Mr. Darwin argues that Nature, a more powerful, a more continuous power, working over vastly extended ranges of time, can do more. But why should Nature, so uniform and persistent in all her operations, tend in this instance to change? Why should she become a selector of varieties?63Another critic, Fleeming Jenkin, found the analogy a weakness in Darwin's theory because of the limited extent of variation in any one direction in domestic animals and plants.64 We have already seen that Darwin had confided a similar view to his notebook thirty years earlier, but changed his mind as a result of his profound study of domesticates. De Beer's reference to “an English country gentleman's knowledge of domestic plants and animals and their breeding”65 fails totally to recognize the originality and depth of Darwin's knowledge of domesticates.Why did Darwin, against the currents of his time, rely so heavily on mankind's experience with domesticated organisms to shape his theory about species in nature? On reason is that only with domesticates was an approach that came close to experimental verification possible. Darwin fully realized the inadequacies of the experiment, as is emphasized by his repeated contrasting of selection under nature and selection by man. Yet the extensive experience and data of plant and animal breeders offered the only reliable base against which Darwin could continually challenge his views. As he wrote in the introduction to Variation, with domestication, “man ... may be said to have been trying an experiment on a gigantic scale.”66 Given Darwin's high opinion of the quantitative work of Malthus and Quetelet (as emphasized by Schweber),67 and his unremitting efforts to secure data by which to test his theories, it was inevitable that he should attach high significance to domesticated varieties. John Tyndall, in his Belfast address of 1874, said: “The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists, not in experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought.”68 Darwin would have agreed with the latter thought, but I think he would have challenged the preceding one on the grounds that long experience with domesticated varieties did provide an element of experimental demonstration. It gave him confidence in his theory, and he used his vast knowledge of artificial selection boldly and creatively. (shrink)

In this essay I will argue that natural selection is more important to functional explanations than what has been thought in some of the literature in philosophy of biology. I start by giving a brief overview of the two paradigms cases of functional explanations: etiological functions and causal-role functions. i then consider one particular attempt to conciliate both perspectives given by David Buller. Buller's trial to conciliate both etiological functions and causal-role functions results in what he calls a (...) class='Hi'>weak etiological theory. I argue that Buller has not succeeded in his construal of the weak etiological theory: he underestimates the role that selective processes have in functional explanations and so his theory may not be classified as an etiologial theory. As an alternative, I consider the account of etiological functions given by Ruth Millikan and I argue that Millikan's theory is more comprehensive to assess contentious case in biology like exaptations. Finally, I conclude by analyzing where the adoption of Millikan's theory leave us. I argue, contrary to Millikan and others, that once we assume the importance of natural selection in functional explanations, there is no strong reason to resist a linguistic reform of the word function and hence that the attempts to conciliate both etiological functions and causal-role functions are misplaced. (shrink)

Identifying the referent of novel words is a complex process that young children do with relative ease. When given multiple objects along with a novel word, children select the most novel item, sometimes retaining the word‐referent link. Prior work is inconsistent, however, on the role of object novelty. Two experiments examine 18‐month‐old children's performance on referent selection and retention with novel and known words. The results reveal a pervasive novelty bias on referent selection with both known and novel (...) names and, across individual children, a negative correlation between attention to novelty and retention of new word‐referent links. A computational model examines possible sources of the bias, suggesting novelty supports in‐the‐moment behavior but not retention. Together, results suggest that when lexical knowledge is weak, attention to novelty drives behavior, but alone does not sustain learning. Importantly, the results demonstrate that word learning may be driven, in part, by low‐level perceptual processes. (shrink)

Recently there has been a tendency on the part of some scientific realists to weaken their philosophical theses with respect to the success of science. Some of them have suggested that a satisfactorily realist standpoint should be a highly modest approach to scientific success, leaving many with the impression that scientific realism nowadays is nothing that we once thought it was. In light of that, the main concern of this paper is methodological, here I want to answer the question how (...) far can we push the boundaries of our realist commitments and still be in control of our philosophical claims. In particular, I deal with the issue of how a certain type of weak version of selective realism will necessarily allow for true contradictions, dialetheias –even if that is not desirable. Here I argue that if one presents a very weak characterization of selective realism, one that is in line with contemporary projects, this type of realism will not forbid the possibility of things such as dialetheias. I also claim that, if that is the case, we face the following dilemma: or our general characterization of selective realism is mistaken or selective realists cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of why and how to forbid dialetheias in science. (shrink)

Due to the huge amount of data being generating from different sources, the analyzing and extracting of useful information from these data becomes a very complex task. The difficulty of dealing with big data optimization problems comes from many factors such as the high number of features, and the existing of lost data. The feature selection process becomes an important step in many data mining and machine learning algorithms to reduce the dimensionality of the optimization problems and increase the (...) performance of the classification or clustering algorithms. In this paper, a set of hybrid and efficient genetic algorithms are proposed to solve feature selection problem, when the handled data has a large feature size. The proposed algorithms use a new gene-weighted mechanism that can adaptively classify the features into strong relative features, weak or redundant features, and unstable features during the evolution of the algorithm. Based on this classification, the proposed algorithm gives the strong features high priority and the weak features less priority when generating new candidate solutions. In the same time, the proposed algorithm tries to more concentrate on unstable features that sometimes appear and sometimes disappear from the best solutions of the population. The performance of proposed algorithms is investigated by using different datasets and feature selection algorithms. The results show that our proposed algorithms can outperform the other feature selection algorithms and effectively enhance the classification performance over the tested datasets. (shrink)

Two major clarifications have greatly abetted the understanding and fruitful expansion of the theory of natural selection in recent years: the acknowledgment that interactors, not replicators, constitute the causal unit of selection; and the recognition that interactors are Darwinian individuals, and that such individuals exist with potency at several levels of organization (genes, organisms, demes, and species in particular), thus engendering a rich hierarchical theory of selection in contrast with Darwin’s own emphasis on the organismic level. But (...) a piece of the argument has been missing, and individuals at levels distinct from organisms have been denied potency (although granted existence within the undeniable logic of the theory), because they do not achieve individuality with the same devices used by organisms and therefore seem weak by comparison. We show here that different features define Darwinian individuality across scales of size and time. In particular, species-individuals may develop few emergent features as direct adaptations. The interactor approach works with emergent fitnesses, not with emergent features; and species, as a consequence of their different mechanism for achieving individuality (reproductive exclusivity among subparts, that is, among organisms), express many effects from other levels. Organisms, by contrast, suppress upwardly cascading effects, because the organismic style of individuality (by functional integration of subparts) does not permit much competition or differential reproduction of parts from within. Species do not suppress the operation of lower levels; such effects therefore become available as exaptations conferring emergent fitness—a primary source of the different strength that species achieve as effective Darwinian individuals in evolution. (shrink)

In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as (...) well as on in-depth studies of Darwin's public and private writings, this book offers an original perspective on Darwin's argument, restoring to view the intellectual traditions which Darwin took for granted in arguing as he did. From this perspective come new appreciations not only of Darwin's argument but of the metaphors based on it, the range of wider traditions the argument touched upon, and its legacies for science after the Origin. (shrink)

In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as (...) well as on in-depth studies of Darwin's public and private writings, this book offers an original perspective on Darwin's argument, restoring to view the intellectual traditions which Darwin took for granted in arguing as he did. From this perspective come new appreciations not only of Darwin's argument but of the metaphors based on it, the range of wider traditions the argument touched upon, and its legacies for science after the Origin. (shrink)

Our thesis concerns how practical reasoning normally works, and it identifies a problem with a widely shared characterization of it. In this paper, we argue that many ordinary cases of action selection, and not just exceptions involving addiction or weakness of will, exhibit an interesting form of irrationality that stems from a drive to avoid effortfulness. Focusing on two case studies, we argue that the initiation of pointless actions, and procrastination regarding well-justified actions, are often explicable by reference to (...) effort avoidance as opposed to the agent’s explicit judgments or desires. This is so because practical reasoning is sensitive to effortfulness, and influenced by a drive to avoid effortfulness, and this very avoidance is often askew from standard inputs to practical reasoning (such as desires, beliefs, goals, and intentions). Effort avoidance thus plays a powerful and hitherto unnoticed role in many ordinary cases of action selection. As we explain, effort avoidance works subtly, by negatively affectively coloring effortful action options, and silently, without revealing effort anticipation as the source of this coloring. In so doing, effort avoidance can undermine the agent’s control over behavior by undermining the control they exercise in practical reasoning. Still, in some cases agents can bring feelings related to effortfulness into focal awareness, rendering better control over practical reasoning possible. Control is within our reach. It just happens not to be the norm in the way that standard philosophy of action would have us believe. (shrink)

This paper presents a concise analytical review of selected case studies on the integration of multiphysics methods in aerospace structural design, with emphasis on rocket and high-speed vehicle applications. The review synthesizes peer-reviewed publications (2022–2025) indexed in Web of Science and Scopus that address coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics—Finite Element Method (CFD–FEM) analyses, fluid–structure interaction (FSI), conjugate heat transfer (CHT), ablation and thermal protection modeling, and multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) incorporating surrogate and machine-learning accelerants. Source selection and evaluation prioritized methodological (...) transparency, relevance to structural design tasks, and applicability of results to engineering practice. The surveyed studies indicate that fully coupled CFD–FEM and FSI formulations are capable of reproducing key interactions among aerodynamic, thermal and structural fields, while posing significant numerical and computational demands related to mesh compatibility, stiffness of governing equations and temporal integration. CHT approaches yield improved estimates of interfacial heat fluxes for nozzles and TPS elements when turbulent flow models are combined with wall conduction models. Multidimensional ablation models provide mechanistic insight into material removal processes but require careful treatment of thermochemical coupling and validation against experimental data. Recent developments in multifidelity optimization and gradient-enhanced surrogate models demonstrate potential to reduce computational cost in MDO workflows without discarding essential physics. Given the limited scope inherent to a concise analytical review, conclusions are presented as informed recommendations rather than exhaustive generalizations. Recommended practical measures for engineering application include: explicit consistency of boundary and initial conditions across disciplinary solvers; use of adaptive local mesh refinement in regions of strong gradients; adoption of hybrid coupling strategies (e.g., weak/iterative coupling, multiscale and multifidelity frameworks) to balance accuracy and cost; and integration of surrogate or data-driven models into optimization loops with rigorous uncertainty quantification and targeted validation for TPS, nozzle and thin-walled components. These recommendations aim to support practitioners and researchers seeking to improve predictive capability and computational efficiency in multiphysics design procedures for aerospace systems. (shrink)

A large literature has grown up around the proposed use of ‘weak measurements’ to allegedly provide information about hidden ontological features of quantum systems. This paper attempts to clarify the fact that ‘weak measurements’ involve strong measurements on one member of an entangled system. The only thing ‘weak’ about such measurements is that the correlation established via the entanglement does not correspond to eigenstates of the ‘weakly measured observable’ for the remaining component system subject to the (...) class='Hi'>weak measurement. All observed statistics are straightforwardly and easily predicted by standard quantum mechanics. Specifically, it is noted that measurement of the pointer steers the remaining degree of freedom into new states with new statistical properties—constituting a non-trivial disturbance. In addition, standard quantum mechanics readily allows us to conditionalize on a final state if we choose, so the ‘post-selection’ that features prominently in time-symmetric formulations is also equipment from standard quantum theory. Assertions in the literature that weak measurements leave a system negligibly disturbed, and/or that standard quantum theory is cumbersome for computing the predicted measurement results, are therefore unsupportable, and ontological claims based on such assertions need to be critically reassessed. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on one controversial element of the method of reflective equilibrium, namely Rawls’s idea that the commitments that enter the justificatory procedure should be pre-selected or filtered: According to him, only considered judgements should be taken into account in moral philosophy. There are two camps of critics of this filtering process: 1) Critics of reflective equilibrium: They reject the Rawlsian filtering process as too weak and seek a more reliable one, which would actually constitute a (...) distinct epistemic method. 2) Proponents of reflective equilibrium: They reject the Rawlsian filtering process as too exclusionary. We defend RE against its critics, arguing that the method can secure reasonable commitments without depending on a strong external filtering process. However, we side with the critical proponents of reflective equilibrium and argue that without the Rawlsian weak filtering process, RE is more plausible both as a general method as well as in the context of moral philosophy. (shrink)

Despite claims to the contrary, the curious statistical properties of pre- and post-selected ensembles are neither impossible nor surprising. The properties of weak measurements on such ensembles are examined and shown to be in complete accord with ordinary quantum mechanics.

This chapter examines the notorious issue of group selection in behavioural ecology, one of the mainstays of the traditional levels of selection debate. The history of the group selection controversy is briefly traced. The relationship between group selection, kin selection, and evolutionary game theory is discussed. An important debate between Sober and Wilson and Maynard Smith concerning the correct way to conceptualize group selection is explored. Lastly, some arguments of L. Nunney concerning the distinction (...) between weak and strong altruism, and how individual and group selection should be defined, are examined. (shrink)

In combination with post-selection, weak measurements can lead to surprising results known as anomalous weak values. These lie outside the bounds of the spectrum of the relevant observable, as in the canonical example of measuring the spin of an electron (along some axis) to be 100. We argue that the disturbance caused by the weak measurement, while small, is sufficient to significantly affect the measurement result, and that this is the most reasonable explanation of anomalous (...) class='Hi'>weak values. (shrink)

The theory of weak measurements developed by Aharonov and coworkers has been applied by them and others to several interesting problems in which the system of interest is both pre- and post-selected. When the probability of successful post-selection is very small the prediction for the weak value of the measured quantity is often “bizarre” and sometimes controversial, lying outside the range of possibility for a classical system or for a quantum system in the absence of post-selection (...) (e.g. negative kinetic energies associated with particles found immediately after the weak measurement deep inside a classically forbidden region). In Bohmian mechanics a quantum particle is postulated to be a point-like particle which is always accompanied by a wave which probes its environment and guides its motion accordingly. Hence, from the point of view of this theory, it is natural to ask whether the measured weak value under consideration is a property of the point-like particle or of the wave (or of both) and what, if anything, it is that is actually being measured. In this paper, weak measurements of position, momentum and kinetic energy are considered for very simple case studies with these questions in mind. (shrink)

Oaksford and Chater (1994) proposed to analyse the Wason selection task as an inductive instead of a deductive task. Applying Bayesian statistics, they concluded that the cards that participants tend to select are those with the highest expected information gain. Therefore, their choices seem rational from the perspective of optimal data selection. We tested a central prediction from the theory in three experiments: card selection frequencies should be sensitive to the subjective probability of occurrence for individual cards. (...) In Experiment 1, expected frequencies of the p- and the q-card were manipulated independently by concepts referring to large vs. small sets. Although the manipulation had an effect on card selection frequencies, there was only a weak correlation between the predicted and the observed patterns. In the second experiment, relative frequencies of individual cards were manipulated more directly by explicit frequency information. In addition, participants estimated probabilities for the four logical cases and of the conditional statement itself. The experimental manipulations strongly affected the probability estimates, but were completely unrelated to card selections. This result was replicated in a third experiment. We conclude that our data provide little support for optimal data selection theory. (shrink)

Rebecca Bennett, in a recent paper dismissing Julian Savulescu's principle of procreative beneficence, advances both a negative and a positive thesis. The negative thesis holds that the principle's theoretical foundation – the notion of impersonal harm or non-person-affecting wrong – is indefensible. Therefore, there can be no obligations of the sort that the principle asserts. The positive thesis, on the other hand, attempts to plug an explanatory gap that arises once the principle has been rejected. That is, it holds that (...) the intuitions of those who adhere to the principle are not genuine moral intuitions, but instead simply give voice to mere (non-moral) preferences. This paper, while agreeing that Savulescu's principle does not express a genuine moral obligation, takes issue with both of Bennett's theses. It is suggested that the argument for the negative thesis is either weak or question-begging, while there is insufficient reason to suppose the positive thesis true. (shrink)

By exploring a prominent controversy in the recent history of the philosophy of science, I vindicate the role of metahistorical reasoning when historical case studies are used as evidence to support conflicting philosophical claims. I draw on the selective realism debate concerning the caloric theory of heat as a case study, arguing that basic criteria of historical adequacy are sufficiently robust to adjudicate this disagreement. On these grounds, I rebut the view that the dispute about caloric cannot be resolved in (...) historical terms. This position is based on historical pluralism—namely, the argument that historical evidence cannot settle philosophical disagreements, partially because historiographical standards are too weak for adjudication. After characterizing historical pluralism and considering its rationale for diagnosing the selective realism debate about caloric, I show how this philosophical conflict is resolved in terms of standards for assessing the quality of the competing reconstructions of Joseph Black’s and Antoine Lavoisier’s epistemic pronouncements about the materiality of heat. (shrink)

A laborious search of the literature on decoloniality yielded 241 books dealing with various issues regarding the socio-philosophy. Of these books, five focused exclusively on the socio-philosophy. They are the following: (1) Mignolo, The Politics of Decolonial Investigations on Decoloniality (2021); (2) Mignolo and Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (2018); (3) Scauso, Intersectional Decoloniality (2022); (4) McEwan, Postcolonialism, Decoloniality and Development (2018); and (5) Nhemachena et al., Social and Legal Theory in the Age of Decoloniality: (Re-)Envisioning Pan-African Jurisprudence in (...) the 21st Century (2018). In the second introductory chapter of this book, I broach the aforementioned books using the “studied criticism” approach, which involves judging each work’s strengths and weaknesses. There are three major types of this approach. They are (1) “destructive criticism,” which involves tearing down; (2) “constructive criticism,” which refers to building together; and (3) “instructive criticism,” which adds on to what a writer presents. Accordingly, each book is analyzed in four subsections. The first subsection entails a brief synopsis of the main ideas of the book. The second subsection assesses the theoretical framework used in the book. The third subsection encompasses an evaluation of the research methodology employed in the book. And, the fourth subsection appraises the analytical technique(s) utilized. In the end, an overall determination of its strengths and weaknesses is made. (shrink)

This article focuses on both daily forms of weakness of will as discussed in the philosophical debate and psychopathological phenomena as impairments of decision making. We argue that both descriptions of dysfunctional decision making can be organized within a common theoretical framework that divides the decision making process in three different stages: option generation, option selection, and action initiation. We first discuss our theoretical framework, focusing on option generation as an aspect that has been neglected by previous models. In (...) the main body of this article, we review how both philosophy and neuropsychiatry have provided accounts of dysfunction in each decision-making stage, as well as where these accounts can be integrated. Also, the neural underpinnings of dysfunction in the three different stages are discussed. We conclude by discussing advantages and limitations of our integrative approach. (shrink)

Modifying the descriptive and theoretical generalizations of Relativized Minimality, we argue that a significant subset of weak island violations arise when an extracted phrase should scope over some intervener but is unable to. Harmless interveners seem harmless because they can support an alternative reading. This paper focuses on why certain wh-phrases are poor wide scope takers, and offers an algebraic perspective on scope interaction. Each scopal element SE is associated with certain operations (e.g., not with complements). When a wh-phrase (...) scopes over some SE, the operations associated with that SE are performed in its denotation domain. The requisite operations may or may not be available in a domain, however. We present an empirical analysis of a variety of wh-phrases. It is argued that the wh-phrases that escape all weak islands (i.e., can scope over any intervener) are those that range over individuals, the reason being that all Boolean operations are defined for their domain. Collectives, manners, amounts, numbers, etc. all denote in domains with fewer operations and are thus selectively sensitive to scopal interveners—a “semantic relativized minimality effect”. (shrink)

The best developed formulation of closed system quantum theory that handles multiple-time statements, is the consistent (or decoherent) histories approach. The most important weaknesses of the approach is that it gives rise to many different consistent sets, and it has been argued that a complete interpretation should be accompanied with a natural mechanism leading to a (possibly) unique preferred consistent set. The existence of multiple consistent sets becomes more problematic because it allows the existence of contrary inferences [1]. We analyse (...) the conceptual difficulties that arise from the existence of multiple consistent sets and provide a suggestion for a natural set selection criterion. This criterion does not lead to a unique physical consistent set, however it evades the existence of consistent sets with contrary inferences. The criterion is based on the concept of preclusion and the requirement that probability one propositions and their inferences should be non-contextual. The allowed consistent sets turn-out to be compatible with coevents which are the ontology of an alternative, histories based, formulation [2–4]. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that the availability of what some authors have called the weak reading and the strong reading of donkey sentences with relative clauses is systematically related to monotonicity properties of the determiner. The correlation is different from what has been observed in the literature in that it concerns not only right monotonicity, but also left monotonicity (persistence/antipersistence). I claim that the reading selected by a donkey sentence with a double monotone determiner is in fact the (...) one that validates inference based on the left monotonicity of the determiner. This accounts for the lack of strong reading in donkey sentences with MON determiners, which have been neglected in the literature. I consider the relevance of other natural forms of inference as well, but also suggest how monotonicity inference might play a central role in the actual process of interpretation. The formal theory is couched in dynamic predicate logic with generalized quantifiers. (shrink)

For every natural number n we introduce a new weak choice principle n upper R upper C Subscript f i n $\mathrm {nRC_{fin}}$ nRCfin:Given any infinite set x, there is an infinite subsety subset of or equal to x $y\subseteq x$ y⊆xand a selection function f that chooses an n-element subset from every finitez subset of or equal to y $z\subseteq y$ z⊆ycontaining at least n elements.By constructing new permutation models built on a set of atoms obtained as (...) Fraïssé limits, we will study the relation of n upper R upper C Subscript f i n $\mathrm {nRC_{fin}}$ nRCfin to the weak choice principles upper R upper C Subscript m $\mathrm {RC_m}$ RCm (that has already been studied in [3] and [6]):Given any infinite set x, there is an infinite subsety subset of or equal to x $y\subseteq x$ y⊆xwith a choice function f on the family of all m-element subsets of y.Moreover, we prove a stronger analogue of the results in [6] when we study the relation between n upper R upper C Subscript f i n $\mathrm {nRC_{fin}}$ nRCfin and k upper C Subscript f i n Superscript minus $\mathrm {kC_{fin}^-}$ kCfin− which is defined byGiven any infinite familyscript upper F $\mathcal {F}$ Fof finite sets of cardinality greater than k, there is an infinite subfamilyscript upper A subset of or equal to script upper F $\mathcal {A}\subseteq \mathcal {F}$ A⊆Fwith a selection function f that chooses a k-element subset from eachupper A element of script upper A $A\in \mathcal {A}$ A∈A. (shrink)

Both Tadeusz Kotarbiński and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz referred in their philosophical inquiries to the so-called arguments from paraphrase. These arguments, assert as one of the premises the statement that there is a paraphrastic relation holding between some expressions. This type of argumentation is quite common in analytic philosophy, perhaps even essential for it. Meanwhile, the methodological status of this operation and relation still needs reflection. In this chapter, two arguments from paraphrase are discussed: Kotarbiński’s argument for the methodological thesis of reism (...) (in Marian Przełęcki’s interpretation) and Ajdukiewicz’s argument against transcendental idealism. We will show the place of paraphrastic premises in the structure of selected philosophical arguments. We will reconstruct an assumed meaning of ‘the relation of paraphrase’ and present the reasons supporting those premises. We will discuss the argument for the methodological thesis of reism which is based upon a weak formulation of the semantic thesis and the methodological principle of ontological parsimony. A reist should be able to formulate a reistic theory of paraphrase, and in particular, he should not assume non-reistic expressions to be primarily meaningful. As it seems, his theory should match non-reistic and reistic sentences, on the sole basis of their syntactic structure. As stated by Kotarbiński himself, justification supporting the semantic thesis of reism is naively intuitive and based on common induction. Ajdukiewicz tries to reformulate the position of idealism, expressed in the thesis of idealism. Therefore, he establishes a correlation between expressions belonging to the idealist language and expressions belonging to the language of semantic epistemology. By using metalogical theorems, he demonstrates the falsehood of the thesis of idealism in its semantic formulation. However, the principles of the procedure of semantic paraphrase used by Ajdukiewicz are not—and probably cannot be—strictly defined what undermines the validity of his account. (shrink)

We investigate in this work the meaning of weak values through the prism of property ascription in quantum systems. Indeed, the weak measurements framework contains only ingredients of the standard quantum formalism, and as such weak measurements are from a technical point of view uncontroversial. However attempting to describe properties of quantum systems through weak values—the output of weak measurements—goes beyond the usual interpretation of quantum mechanics, that relies on eigenvalues. We first recall the usual (...) form of property ascription, based on the eigenstate-eigenvalue link and the existence of “elements of reality”. We then describe against this backdrop the different meanings that have been given to weak values. We finally argue that weak values can be related to a specific form of property ascription, weaker than the eigenvalues case but still relevant to a partial description of a quantum system. (shrink)

In order to reduce the dimensionality of parameter space and enhance out-of-sample forecasting performance, this research compares regularization techniques with Autometrics in time-series modeling. We mainly focus on comparing weighted lag adaptive LASSO with Autometrics, but as a benchmark, we estimate other popular regularization methods LASSO, AdaLASSO, SCAD, and MCP. For analytical comparison, we implement Monte Carlo simulation and assess the performance of these techniques in terms of out-of-sample Root Mean Square Error, Gauge, and Potency. The comparison is assessed with (...) varying autocorrelation coefficients and sample sizes. The simulation experiment indicates that, compared to Autometrics and other regularization approaches, the WLAdaLASSO outperforms the others in covariate selection and forecasting, especially when there is a greater linear dependency between predictors. In contrast, the computational efficiency of Autometrics decreases with a strong linear dependency between predictors. However, under the large sample and weak linear dependency between predictors, the Autometrics potency ⟶ 1 and gauge ⟶ α. In contrast, LASSO, AdaLASSO, SCAD, and MCP select more covariates and possess higher RMSE than Autometrics and WLAdaLASSO. To compare the considered techniques, we made the Generalized Unidentified Model for covariate selection and out-of-sample forecasting for the trade balance of Pakistan. We train the model on 1985–2015 observations and 2016–2020 observations as test data for the out-of-sample forecast. (shrink)

The liver is the human body’s mandatory organ, but detecting liver disease at an early stage is very difficult due to the hiddenness of symptoms. Liver diseases may cause loss of energy or weakness when some irregularities in the working of the liver get visible. Cancer is one of the most common diseases of the liver and also the most fatal of all. Uncontrolled growth of harmful cells is developed inside the liver. If diagnosed late, it may cause death. Treatment (...) of liver diseases at an early stage is, therefore, an important issue as is designing a model to diagnose early disease. Firstly, an appropriate feature should be identified which plays a more significant part in the detection of liver cancer at an early stage. Therefore, it is essential to extract some essential features from thousands of unwanted features. So, these features will be mined using data mining and soft computing techniques. These techniques give optimized results that will be helpful in disease diagnosis at an early stage. In these techniques, we use feature selection methods to reduce the dataset’s feature, which include Filter, Wrapper, and Embedded methods. Different Regression algorithms are then applied to these methods individually to evaluate the result. Regression algorithms include Linear Regression, Ridge Regression, LASSO Regression, Support Vector Regression, Decision Tree Regression, Multilayer Perceptron Regression, and Random Forest Regression. Based on the accuracy and error rates generated by these Regression algorithms, we have evaluated our results. The result shows that Random Forest Regression with the Wrapper Method from all the deployed Regression techniques is the best and gives the highest R2-Score of 0.8923 and lowest MSE of 0.0618. (shrink)